I have a hard time leveling Alliance because their story is boring in BfA.
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Uh when that “one character” is being ham-fisted into representing the entire faction, yeah I am. The Alliance being a punching bag sucks, I agree, but Blizzard wants the Alliance to be to be Anduin incarnate and thats what Anduin is. We’ll go from one faction to zero factions though if Baine becomes Warchief because he’s equally a fan fiction mary sue.
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One of our leaders has a different opinion. We should kill him.
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The entire BfA story reads like the writing team just took some coloring books of previous plot lines and the most asinine tropes, and colored them in crayon to use as this xpac’s storyboard. Both the Alliance and Horde stories are clunky as hell, and the regressive “development” of longtime characters was frustrating to witness.
In Legion, I was motivated to level alts of different classes because the story wasn’t as contrived, and the individual order halls gave it substantial replayability. In BfA, I groan every time one of my alts hits level 110 because no matter which side I play, the story combined with the current gearing, rep grind, and dungeon loot systems just make for an unenjoyable experience (to me).
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True, but as alliance I really did have to ask if I even accomplished anything this expansion for story reasons.
In terms of story… It just felt like we got participation trophy’s.
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Horde dominated the beginning followed by alliance winning in the main story. We blew up the dang zandalari navy, killed their king, we have a quest where we kill hundreds of goblins for a quest, we have a far better service metal mount. IMO I think alliance over all is doin pretty good.
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Mary Sue’s are perfect characters that know all the answers, overcome all obstacles effortlessly, are easily best at whatever skillset they’re given for the story, and everyone in the story generally adores them, or thinks they’re special.
You can like or hate how Baine is written, that’s fine. But he doesn’t qualify as a Mary Sue.
Neither really does Anduin, though he’s closer. He still screws up, makes bad decisions, and is not universally adored.
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I’ve quite enjoyed the story.
shrug
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Wait, BFA had a story that involved the Alliance? I thought we were just here to provide a foil for the Horde.
Why did no one tell me this??!??
(pouts and puts out cookies and giggles)
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I have actually liked the whole Jaina reintroduction aspect of BfA. That has been well done.
But, I really dislike that as always, the alliance remains reactionary to the Horde -Sylvanas- The attack on Dazar’alor made sense, but the whole KulTiras/Zandalar front should be the side plot of the main Horde/Alliance conflict, but it is the opposite.
I feel the focus should be on the larger war, but places like Darkshore and Arathi, that should be the main stages, are barely a thought.
It’s like we are playing the spin off of this great alliance-horde war while the main story is happening somewhere else, like we are on the side quest to collect a navy while the real war is out there, and IDK, feels like we are missing the actual Battle for Azeroth.
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i hated MOP so bad i quit and only just came back for BfA. what’s especially irksome about BfA’s writing is that stuff like the jaina storyline, the drustvar quests and really the entire zone(seriously, going into drustvar was like stepping into an edgar allen poe novel, i loved it), and the way all of that tied in with the ashvane conspiracy and storm’s wake and recalling the fleet was just…
some of BfA’s writing is REALLY REALLY GOOD, and it makes the crappy parts suck so much more because you see all this stupid crap and you’re like “c’mon blizzard, i KNOW you can do better than this! wtf!?”
i don’t know jack about the horde side of things, but like, tyrande and malfurion are basically the emo regents of darkshore now. that entire quest/story phase was utterly dissapointing. tyrande called down the wrath of the moon to become elune’s avatar of vengeance! why is she just farting around darkshore with malfurion ganking irrellevant horde NPC’s? if supposedly elune’s vengeance was such a dread power that most who attempted it died, and everytime someone succeeded the night elves unilaterally GOT THEIR VENGEANCE all those times, then where is the “payoff in awesomeness” for enduring such an emo edgelord questline in the first place? instead tyrande is basically darkshore’s whiny goth queen now.
sylvanus burning the tree just didn’t make any sense, and the fallout from it ever since then has been even less sensible. a savage, raging, primal horde going all in for violence and slaughter would have made sense. burning teldrassil like she did was cold, calculated murder for NO POINT WHATSOEVER.
okay, the caveat to that would have been to burn the tree to enrage the alliance. and on the face of things you’d think that’s what has happened. but it didn’t. instead the alliance just flails around like toddler who just lost their favorite toy, without doing anything actually effectual. the “big bad plot motivation event” falls flat if it doesn’t actually, you know, move the plot along and incite things.
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Nope not irked at all. I’ve enjoyed bfa a lot. Best end game of any expansion by far.
I also really liked the zones, art, and music.
The story in drust was particularly good.
Sorry you’ve missed all the fun
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Yes I use the term loosely but your just nitpicking for the sake of argument.
This describes both characters pretty well. I dont play Alliance but my understanding is the only two people not happy with Anduin are Tyrande and Malfurion no? Anduin and the Alliance are losing at Lordaeron until the flying Dutchwoman shows up at the perfect time and saves the day.
Baine and the player raid a ship full of forsaken to retrieve Dereks body, swatting away entire groups of Dark Rangers like they’re nothing. The eve Baine is apparently to be executed the player and a whole two other people fight their way through the entirety of ragefire casm to rescue him.
So yes maybe not by dictionary definition but to argue they haven’t triumphed over insane odds with average skillsets is pretty ridiculous.
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I lost all interest in BFA when they decided to give Night Elf lore to the Nightborne instead and so I barely log on now and sort of feel gross about logging in to my NElf main.
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It never turned me off to begin with.
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I’ve enjoyed the story on both sides well enough. I’m not really into the faction war much to begin with, but overall it’s all been pretty solid to me. I’ve had no trouble following or liking it. The zone stories in particular are great as always!
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It’s just about impossible to attribute people staying or leaving in BFA to story, because it has just way too much wrong with it in terms of gameplay for everyone, and the specific gameplay downsides of the factional disparity between Horde and Alliance began well before BFA.
But, in a hypothetical where everything else is going great in all the other aspects, I would still actually disagree with the premise that the story quality has much of an effect one way or another on players staying or leaving (past expansions have had their own massive story mishandlings worthy of their own essays). That is not to say that story quality is unimportant as a whole, but in terms of engagement, the biggest area story handling affects the playerbase is in pacing.
To the extent that’s impacting BFA negatively right now, I’d say that’s more of a recent problem in BFA, due largely to the nature of the current content patch.
Nazjatar and Mechagon make the faction war feel like someone hit the pause button. Nearly everything related to the war was experienced within the first week or two by the playerbase (mainly the Baine scenario). For the months afterwards, we’re in these zones that just feel totally disconnected from the expansion’s theme, collecting some junk for mechagnomes or harrassing some random naga for our Ankoan / Unshackled friends in Nazjatar (whose own plotlines are pretty much limited to, “we hate naga and will help you do some dailies.”)
Blizzard really should have taken the time to create more unfolding quest chains to be available with this patch, letting the two factions experience the aftermath of the Baine scenario in bits and pieces, seeing how the various sub-factions react to the news. I know we’ll get to see the aftermath eventually, but we’re not getting to see it now when the pacing would feel most natural.
And people’s day-to-day is instead entirely concerned with the weird story limbo of Nazjatar and Mechagon, an underwater wasteland and a junkheap, respectively, where nothing interesting unfolds or happens.
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Did you cry?
Right, what you’re describing is pretty indicative of the fantasy genre in general, not mary sues. Overcoming great odds, and heroic entrances from auxiliary characters, happens all throughout fiction, especially the fantasy genre.
Mary sues are generally seen as author wish fulfillment. I.E. everybody loves me, and I’m perfect at everything I do. There’s generally no drama to character because they always do the right thing that solves whatever the current problem is, and then receive loads of praise and adoration for how amazing they are. Examples of recent Mary Sues in fiction are Rey in Star Wars, and Bella Swan in Twilight.
I’m not defending Blizzards writing here, there’s a lot they could improve upon, I’m just pointing out that even though Mary Sue is a term often used to criticize characters, it’s not a loose insult, it has a very specific meaning.
Anyway, I’m derailing this topic.
I agree that the Alliance story very much feels like it was written to support the Horde story. I enjoyed the Jaina story, and agree with others about the Drustvar zone story, but the larger narrative of Bfa is basically a horde story.
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Right, because if the Joker isn’t doing anything Batman just chills on roof tops. That’s what happens when you’re a “good guy”/hero.
Blizzard really needs to make a third faction for people that always want to be the instigators and consider burning down cities with civilians in them to be “winning”.